The Shepard Interviews: Jack
by Necr0nPariah
Summary: A series of interviews with individuals who were affected by Commander Shepard over his lifetime. I'm trying to get the feeling of the characters across using mostly dialogue and flat descriptions of the physical behaviors of the interviewees. As this is my first fanfic, any help and/or criticisms I could get would be great!


__EDIT: Lengthened some sections, made it a bit more Jack-like, general flow changes.

_The Shepard - A Documentary of the Galaxy's Savior_  
_Interview 4, Part 1 - Jacqueline (Jennifer) Harris-Naught, Instructor of Advanced Combat Biotics, Grissom Academy_  
_Conducted by Dr. Marvin Davies, PhD_

Dr. Marvin Davies: Miss Harris?

Jacqueline Harris: It's "Jack". Drop the bullshit and let's get this done, I have a class in half an hour.

MD: I'm Marvin Davies, I'm the one researching and reporting on the late Commander Shepard. I think I speak for the entire team here when I say I'm glad you were able to make time for this interview.

JH: Yeah. Thanks. Whatever. Look, can we make this fast? I, uh... [pauses, looks away] I have some shit needs doing.

MD: Certainly. Now, we are trying, in this documentary, to look at who Commander Shepard was as a man, as a human being, and as such, we're hoping you could answer our questions with a focus on him, rather than his actions.

JH: Yeah, yeah, I... [sighs] I can do that.

MD: So, how did you first meet the Commander?

JH: [Snorts] Meet him? Well, I was in cryo on a prison ship – The Purgatory, a Blue Suns outfit. Now, I don't know much about history and dead people, but that one cult taught me everything I need to know about religion, and Purgatory was the shittiest name the Suns could've called it. Purgatory? More like "Floating Hell". 'Bout a third of the guards had just finished doing their time in other prisons...

But yeah, Shepard. Shepard was the first thing I saw when the ice melted off my eyes after he de-frosted me. He actually looked real fucking surprised, like, "That's Jack? That's the crazy biotic they had to freeze solid to save their worthless nutsacks?"

Then the damn YMIRs kinda blocked the view, and I figured I should kill those first. Destroy. Break. Whatever. Fucking robots... So, yeah. Blew them up, ran for the hangar, killed anyone who got in my way, and then I saw a ship – his ship, Shepard's, I mean – and it had this big fucking Cerberus symbol on the side. So, you know, that pissed me off, and then Shepard shot this Blue Sun I was about to just...

[makes a twisting motion with her hands]

... Fucking boy scout. So he tells me he's recruiting for some mission, being real vague, and I'm not having any of this shit. Cerberus ship, Cerberus armor, Cerberus cheerleader... can't blame me for thinking he was there to take me back...

MD: Back?

JH: Yeah. To the Teltin facility. Place was a nightmare. They had taken me – Cerberus had taken me – and they had shipped me to the Teltin facility, on Pragia. I was four years old. [Straightens up] You know, I'm twenty-five years old. Until two months ago, I didn't know what my mom looked like.

[Pauses]

They were trying to make some sort of "super-biotic", and I had "the highest biotic potential out of all subjects", apparently. So, they didn't try new stuff, new tech, new theories on me. They tried it on the other kids. If a kid didn't die from it and showed a big increase in biotics, then it was greenlit for Subject Zero!

[Short, sarcastic, humorless laugh, then pause. JH averts eyes slightly, looking past interviewer]

They didn't use anesthesia... It was part of their big fucking theory, that pain would "break down barriers in the mind". Here, take a look.

[JH removes shirt, then swivels chair around to show her back. There is a long, straight scar running down over her spine. It is thick but precise, surgical, even. Other similar scars run precisely angled out from it at intervals. JH pulls shirt back on] I remember that one. That was the one just before they started the fights. Just me against another kid.

MD: That must have been awful.

JH: [Smiles ruefully] I loved it. Only time I was ever allowed out of my cell, except for surgery. I didn't fight the first time. So they tasered me. The next time, I attacked the kid, tried to hold back. But I was a kid, too, I didn't mean to...

[JH pauses, swallows]

...and when he went down, the IV I was hooked up to switched to some drug mix. I still don't know what it was, but damn... that shit was good. And whenever there were fights, and I hurt another kid, boom! Subject Zero was high as a kite, and then some. Imagine – imagine taking ecstasy while drunk, and then getting the best fuck you've ever had. Yeah. Every time I killed a kid, that would happen to me.

[Pauses, then looks straight at the camera]

I still get warm feelings during a fight.

MD: So, Shepard freed you from a prison ship, but you figured it was a Cerberus trap. How did he convince you to join him?

JH: It was either his ship or no ship, and Purgatory was leaking air like a drunk volus' wallet at the slots. And Shepard also offered me info on people, places. Things I planned on killing. 'Course, there was Miranda Lawson, Cerberus cheerleader, getting in the way. It was all, "No, Shepard, stop, Shepard, you're not authorized to do that, Shepard. My tits demand you stop, Shepard."

Good thing he didn't listen to her. I heard she's gotten around to being less of a bitch these days, though. Never expected that, but, hey...

MD: Now, what was the Normandy V2 like? How did Shepard run things?

JH: Pretty loose, really. There was a schedule, and when op time got closer, it would tighten up a lot, but other than that, crew got a lot of free time. Shepard pretty much let me do what and go where I wanted, as long as I didn't damage anything or [short laugh] anyone.

I pretty much just hid down in the hold. The first time I saw him after he had given me the arrival briefing was when he came to see how I was settling in. He kept looking at the shelf I was setting up for a bed. I told him to fuck off, so he did. Two hours later, he comes back down with a mattress and blanket.

[Shakes head]

I nearly broke the dickhead's neck. I... don't like people, especially crowds, so I didn't go get any food for a couple days. Of course, Shepard notices, and he starts bringing down food twice a day. Sometimes he even talked to me, like he wanted to and it wasn't just part of a list of things he did.

And I kept calling him a pussy and a Cerberus tool, and one day I just got sick of him and I threatened to breach the hull for kicks. And Shepard takes out his Carnifex – that's his handgun – and shows it to me. And I can still remember what he said, he said, "Jack, this an M-6 Carnifex sidearm. It takes two rounds from this gun to drop a high-level biotic barrier, and one to kill. I know this little fact because I've regularly employed this little beauty of a pistol against asari mercenaries, many with Commando training. Garrus calls it my 'three-boom-splatter technique' and his joke's as accurate as it is morbid. Right now, I've no intentions of using it against you – I like you, and I respect you, I really do; however, if you do intentionally do anything that would result in the injury of one of your fellow crew members, the last things you will ever hear are three shots from this. Two for barriers, one for the head. Three booms, and we'll get the splatter." And I asked him, all sarcastic, about what happens when he misses after I break his hand, and he says, "When it comes to my friends, I don't miss." And then the next day he came down with food. And the next day. And the next. And it was back to business as usual. And do you know what I took away from that?

MD: What?

JH: I just found myself thinking, "This guy actually considers me part of his crew. I'm a  
'fellow crew-member'. When did this happen?"

MD: What happened next?

JH: Well... it was weird. I mean, Shepard would always come down and talk, and I'd always half-answer one or two questions before shutting up. But then... I started looking forward to it. I'd do the same thing, yell at him, not talk, insult him, but hating him wouldn't feel as good as it did before. Like, I'd hear his boots clunking on the stairs, and I'd look up, and I didn't go – I didn't turn – I wasn't – I wasn't angry at him for coming down, as much, I wasn't even apathetic to it. I didn't expect him to keep doing it, but I – I would have missed it if he had stopped, you know? I didn't want to like it. I hated him for it. Just, fucking hated him for weakening me like that.

[Pauses, then continues, more subdued]

But the person I hated most, more than even Shepard, was myself. I was letting him close, and that was not okay. I always kept my shotgun and pistol close, and there were a couple of times that I really thought about just... putting the barrel in my mouth and pulling the trigger. One quick move, just like always – [sad, bitter laugh] 'cept, you know, it was always pointed in the other direction... but I never did.

And Shepard just kept showing up at the bottom of the stairs. I wasn't sure if he really cared or not, or whether this was just like him cleaning his shotgun, just weapon maintenance, or if this was just his way of getting in my pants, but... it was scary.

MD: Did Shepard ever earn your trust?

JH: Yeah. Yeah, he did. I escaped Pragia when I was.. I don't know, twelve? Thirteen? Fourteen? And I never knew where it was, exactly. And then, one day, I was looking through the datapads Shepard gave me, and I found it. I found Pragia, I found Teltin facility. And there were these little bugs, start crawling in my fucking head, bugs I thought I'd squashed years ago. And I wasn't thinking, so I told Shepard where Pragia was, and I told him I wanted to go to Teltin, and plant a big fucking bomb in my cell, a fucking nuke, and watch from orbit when it explodes. And I stop ranting, and I'm not looking at him, and I wait for him to start laughing and walking back up the stairs. Only he doesn't. He radios Joker – that's the ship's asshole pilot – and he tells him to set a course for Pragia, Dakka system. Then he says he has to go talk to Operative Taylor, to see about getting explosives in case we can't find a nuke on the black market.

MD: Did Commander Shepard follow through with what he said he'd do?

JH: Three days later, he calls a crew meeting in one of the observation rooms, says he'd like me to be there, I don't have to say anything, whatever. And I go up to, and I look out the window, and there it is. Pragia. And in the middle of the room is a fucking tactical nuke, you know, the ones that fit in a suitcase? And Shepard tells the crew that they are here on a mission that is important to him and is infinitely more important to a key crew member, and he asks that they all take this just as seriously as a mission against the Collectors, even though the chances of encountering resistance are small to none. Then, after he dismisses them without choosing mission operatives, he asks me who I want to be the third man on the mission. I chose Vakarian – you know, Garrus Vakarian – because he didn't try to talk to me, and he's a good fighter to boot. I respected him, I guess. I still do.

But anyway, we landed at Teltin, on the roof 'cause of the freaky super-plants that grew too fast to be natural. And we broke in and things... shit got real. 'Cause back then, you know, I thought that I was just _a_ subject in the facility, not _the_ subject. That I survived cause I was stronger, not because the other kids...died for me.

[A snort of derision, then JH puts her head down for a moment before looking up again.]

Guess who was wrong?


End file.
